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Bill Clinton's 1993 Memorial Day speech at the Vietnam Wall is an example of amnestic rhetoric, which seeks to discourage public debate and to diminish public memory. In this essay I argue that Clinton's epideictic discourse camouflages an act of apologia in which he defends his controversial opposition to the Vietnam War. Second, I argue that Clinton simultaneously directs his audience's attention away from the past and toward the future, urging them to remember the buried, but to bury the memory of Vietnam. Third, I argue that the speech culminates with an act of rhetorical investiture for Clinton as commander in chief. Finally, I propose the concept of amnestic rhetoric as an addition to public memory scholarship.
KEY CONCEPTS Amnestic Rhetoric, Public Memory, Rhetorical Investiture, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Bill Clinton.
Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.
- Aldous Huxley1
The word "amnestic" carries with it a curious double meaning. It is at once the adjectival form of amnesty: "An act of oblivion, a general overlooking or pardon of past offences, by the ruling authority" ("Amnesty," def. lb), and the adjectival form of amnesia: "Loss of memory" ("Amnesia"). Together these definitions describe the work of what I refer to as amnestic rhetoric: rhetoric that seeks to discourage public debate and to diminish public memory. Amnestic rhetoric is discourse designed to forestall the communication and commemoration that foster collective contemplation. Ultimately, it is discourse that calls us to silence and to ignorance.
The rhetoric of public memory is so complex that even the most fundamental questions continue to challenge us. Stephen H. Browne notes that after years of study still we wonder, "Who creates it, and by what authority? Who owns public memory, and can it be taken away?" (237). It is the last of these questions that concerns this essay. "National memory," John R. Gillis observes, "is shared by people ... bound together as much by forgetting as by remembering..." (7). Browne also acknowledges that "forgetting...